Battle of Guilford Courthouse Soldier Participant Database

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse: American Participant Database

A team of 25 members of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) compiled a partial participant list of American veterans of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and published it in March 2018. Project team members were from Guilford Battle Chapter and Rachel Caldwell Chapter. The bulk of their entries relied on 19th century pension applications from surviving veterans and widows. Their database can be found online through the Guilford Battleground Company.

Digging through Historical Records

The database honors the individuals for whom there is evidence that they participated in this battle. The content was limited, for the most part, to participation in the actual battle and does not generally include those who were involved in the skirmishes and events surrounding the battle. Evidence of participation in any Revolutionary War battle is not abundant. Most of the Revolutionary War records in the custody of the War Department were destroyed by fire, November 8, 1800 and additional records were lost during the War of 1812. Those that survived include muster rolls, payrolls or supply records. Although these may serve as acceptable evidence for participation in the war, they are not relevant documentation for participation in a specific battle. The most abundant surviving evidence for participation in any battle are pension applications in which an applicant or witness mentioned or described participation in any battle. (Note: Revolutionary War Bounty Land Claims were considered to be a subset of the National Archive’s collection and reference to the set of pension applications also includes these claims.)

Participant Database and the Citizen Archivist Revolutionary War Pension Project

Park staff have consolidated the 2018 NSDAR database with a card catalogue database compiled by a previous generation of park rangers. In May 2024, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park launched a project to transcribe all pension files of veterans of the battle of Guilford Courthouse. Hundreds of volunteer citizen archivists have answered the call and also report biographical information from each veteran / pension applicant. Park staff are producing a more robust database in an Excel spreadsheet. For a current version of the spreadsheet (with over 2,500 American veterans), please contact park staff.